Reproducing/Restoring Old Labels ???

[Mike Gondek]

Photoshop in my opinion. Illustrator is great for designing new labels also, but to simulate the older printing presses of that era you want softer bitmapped type, and can add in some noise.

So you can start in illustrator, but smudge it up in phothshop, and you can use (filter >> texture >> texturizer>> sandstone texture >> elief 1 or 2) on your background color to make it look like the paper you are printing on has more texture. You can also put a small bevel on your type to make it look embossed from what an Intaglio press would do.

[Jon Leopold]

I would also suggest photoshop. If you’re asking what program to use, I’ll assume you don’t know illustrator or photoshop really well and I would then say you could save yourself some time of only learning one program. Do it all in photoshop.

Take the scan of an old one open it up in ps, I would use the clone tool (chcek out some tutorials on clone stamp/ clone tool) to fix up the cracks, ripped parts etc… It will copy the textures from the original and reproduce them. With some practice you can reconstruct it flawlessly. You may also have to draw or re-draw some of the lines and text etc… Good luck.

Thanks very much… High School Media Teacher, multiple Macs (tiger and snow leopard- mac pros, imacs, emacs) and PCs

[Britt Abbott]

Thanks so much for the response. Sounds like Photoshop is the way to go!